I hate to get this Andy Rooney about anything but what’s the deal with bloggingheads? Has anyone ever made it through an entire one (I watched most of the one with Glenn Greenwald and Ana Marie Cox)? Whose idea was it? Isn’t it just “Crossfire” with more contrarianism and less production value? Why was it created?
Bloggingheads
by DougJ| 63 Comments
This post is in: Media, Good News For Conservatives
shecky
I’ve made it through a couple. Most don’t interest me at all, though.
Progressive Elitist
I don’t know if Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus created it, but I think they were prominently involved. Seems about right.
mclaren
It was created because people don’t read anymore.
silentbeep
I actually really like bhtv. I’ve watched more than a few all the way through and felt entertained and more informed. Most of them I don’t watch, but there are quite a few episodes that I liked quite a bit. DougJ: get with it.
(kidding. mostly)
Xanthippas
God, who the hell watches any of them at all? There’s a reason these people blog, people.
jwb
“Why was it created?”
Because we evidently don’t yet have a sufficient number of outlets for useless bloviation?
Mike Kay
it’s also elitist. If focus on so-called “name” bloggers, as opposed to experts.
I mean really, ana marie cox is as shallow and beltway CW as it gets. They might as well have on howard feinman.
slashdotcom
It’s a Kaus creation, and as such it is asinine and generally unenlightening. Oh, and filled with one-upmanship, also too.
irmaladuce
God yes! I wish would just stick dueling blog posts.
Ed Marshall
I used to listen to most of them every day at work. I don’t know why anyone would actually watch them.
Science friday is the best radio show on the planet hands down. I’m blanking the names but they are just awesome. The comment at @3 is just totally fucking wrong. I’ve seen Cox on there paired up with some other airhead but that’s the exception.
You have to pick the wheat the chaff, but sometimes even the chaff is worth exploring. Goldberg vs. Frum should be awful but it wasn’t. It was actually one of the better ones I listened to lately. You could hear Goldberg battling his inner moron against his desire to not get spanked by someone he knew had his number and I found that tension obvious and deliciously funny (although I may just be the only sick person in the world entertained by these things).
Console
It all depends on who you watch, John Mcwhorter and Glenn Loury are usually awesome to watch… but that’s about it.
And as stated above, science friday tends to be interesting
Jack
Two of my favorite things on the Internets are Bloggingheads and Balloon Juice. A great many of the conversations they have over at BhTV are deeply interesting; others, not so much. It all depends on what you’re interested in and who you want to listen to. It also has a lot to do with whether you can stand listening for more than ten or twelve seconds to someone who doesn’t completely agree with you about everything. If you’re the kind of person who needs to be constantly surrounded by the calming effects of the echo chamber, you’re probably not going to like it. But if you’re able to stand, or even enjoy, the give and take of reasonable people discussing politics or culture, you might actually find Bloggingheads interesting. Personally, I think the best way to fortify and strengthen my own ability to express and defend my views is by having a coherent understanding of the arguments made by the other side. Spending all my time in the echo chamber isn’t going to give me that understanding.
As for the suggestion that BhTV is a Kaus creation, that’s not true. It’s a Bob Wright creation, and Wright roped Kaus into being his partner for the first year or so. Mickey has no financial stake in the operation and is now almost entirely out of the picture. He shows up a handful of times per year. I think he’s been on twice in 2010 — and BhTV posts a new video every day.
But the false Kaus connection raises an interesting point: I’ve often wondered why BhTV has been shunned by the liberal blogosphere. The best guesses I can make are (1) BhTV is associated with Kaus in the minds of many or most liberal bloggers, and (2) a general tendency among the liberal blogs to avoid links to anything that isn’t 100% ideologically pure. Since BhTV features participants from across the political spectrum, few liberal bloggers want to drive any traffic to it. Ultimately, though, I think liberalism wins in an environment of open dialogue. It’s when we’re forced to compete with the soundbite and the bumpersticker that we have trouble competing with conservative “ideas.” In an extended dialogue, however, liberal ideas cannot help but outshine and outpersuade conservative ideas. We have nothing to fear by linking to, or watching, a conversation between a conservative and a liberal.
Jack
It all depends on who you watch, John Mcwhorter and Glenn Loury are usually awesome to watch… but that’s about it.
Loury and McWhorter truly are awesome, and their multiple diavlogs during late 2008 and 2009 discussing the election are highly recommended. But they are hardly the only two worth watching. There are too many names to recommend them all, but off the top of my head, some of the highlights are Mark Kleiman, David Weigel, Matt Yglesias, Christopher Hayes, Rosa Brooks, Mark Schmitt, Timothy Noah, Bill Scher, and Robert Wright himself.
And as stated above, science friday tends to be interesting
Science Saturday. But yes, it’s a great regular feature — a conversation every Saturday that is focused on science.
de stijl
It allows Z level media figures to play pretend. Look at me! I’m kind of on teevee!
Morbo
@slashdotcom: Right.
Martin
I’ve watched a few. Most are just terrible, but back during the primaries, there were some particularly interesting discussions on race and topics like that.
The problem with blogs is that you still can’t get a decent conversation/dialogue going. It’s better that most other forms, but a really solid back-and-forth conversation on a narrow topic is almost impossible to duplicate in print.
Unfortunately, the topics and participants tend toward debate rather than discussion, and often are on topics that are getting beat to death on the blogs.
mattt
I watched all of Greenwald v. Frum, and while I can’t say I learned much it was refreshing to see two sharp people from the ideological poles manage to carry on a civil, intelligent discussion at some length. It sort of renewed my hope for our national discourse in general.
Frum asking Goldberg “But do you really believe he’s a socialist?” was great, but I can’t imagine watching that whole hour.
The whole concept, though, was validated forever by the classic Althouse v. Franke-Ruta exchange re: The Valenti Boobs Incident.
Warren Terra
As video, it’s fairly inexplicable. But there’s an audio podcast, and it’s often excellent radio.
Sure, you have to choose which ones to listen to (no Althouse!), but some of the episodes with people I despise can be entertaining: many of the Bob Wright / Mickey Kaus episodes, for example, because so much of them is Wright sarcastically mocking Kaus to his face, or the recent Frum / Goldberg episode, in which Goldberg was made to sound like the fool he so obviously is over and over. After all, appearances on Bloggingheads are often the only times these people have to respectfully confront a (plausibly) intelligent critic of their positions for more than thirty seconds.
Mark S.
@Martin:
Oh, you can have a good discussion in a comment thread. But A-listers generally don’t like getting down here with us hooligans.
Is there anything worse than trying to follow a conversation on Twitter? It’s fun to read Brietbart go ballistic, but an actual conversation is maddening.
Martin
@Mark S.: Yeah, sometimes it’s not too bad, but typing lacks the little cues which keep face-to-face conversations from blowing up, and you can cover a lot more ground verbally than you can writing. A 30 minute conversation would take 3 hours to play out in comments.
Jim Newell
I think it’s that hot new website where you get paired up with another random person on a webcam and then you masturbate to each other.
Bill E Pilgrim
This is from Bloggingheads TV’s “about” section:
Wanna-be TV pundits wondering why no one wanted to invite them to talk on TV, even though other online figures seemed to be on TV all the time. And that’s not even being mean, it’s their own description of themselves.
I saw Robert Wright for the first time a few years back “interviewing” Daniel Dennett, and he basically spent the whole time arguing crypto-intelligent design positions, in place of actually asking questions and listening to the answers. I stopped reading Slate because it includes Mickey Kaus’ incoherent right-wing ranting.
By contrast, this I found to be a really good debate. I entirely agree with Maddow who said that this was what should be happening more, a sharp but civil debate that doesn’t include the extreme right wing as one “side” for a change.
kdaug
Does anyone actually watch these things?
I mean, I’m a big fan of TED, but it (mostly) runs in the background while I work on other things. I’ve heard a few BHTV debates, but I guess I don’t get the point of having to spend the bandwidth on showing me goldfish-bowled Micky Kaus staring into his monitor.
What’s the value-added here?
Yutsano
Never even heard of it until now. Not sure how much I should care now that I have.
@Mark S.:
To me personally, that’s why this blog is so full of win. All our bigwigs (and even some from other blogs) mox it up with us.
Mary G
I’ve never seen any of them; I keep thinking I should but always find something more immediately interesting. It’s partly moved by the fact that usually the only people I see plugging them are the people in them.
@Mark S.: Yes, Twitter discussions give me a headache.
Steeplejack
@Xanthippas:
What X. said. I have
watchedtried to watch a few and just couldn’t get into it. It’s like the worst of both worlds–talking heads arguing and bloviating in a low-information medium, but without the “on air” skills or the saving grace of visual eye candy, e.g., Fox News fembots mouthing someone else’s words.Reading the comments here, I can see where they might be enjoyable to some people. But it has to be like the pleasure you would get not from watching a real movie but from watching crotch-thump outtakes from America’s Funniest Videos. Cf. Jonah Goldberg getting pwned by anybody.
I realize that there probably are good exemplars out there, but that’s like saying that somewhere on YouTube there is a really good, musically interesting kazoo solo. I just don’t want to take the time to look.
That's *Master* of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN)
Some of the ones Mark Kleiman have been in are pretty good. Actual discussion of real policy alternatives.
Martin
@Yutsano: I agree. It’s actually quite nice when folks like Greenwald swing by so we can personally piss on his shoes.
How was the pre-surgery consult? You getting a 3rd arm installed or something cool like that? (someday somebody will do that, you know)
graz
@Martin: Greenwald was on bhtv making nicey-nice with Lessig just hours ago:
Yutsano
@Martin: Quickest doctor’s appointment I’ve ever had. It was more or less a review of what will happen when the procedure actually occurs. The longer portion will be at the hospital tomorrow when I set up the actual surgical time, talk to the anesthesiologist, and
give my sacrifice to the vampiresthe bloodwork done. If all goes well it will tail into right about the time my brother gets off work, so I may take him out to dinner tomorrow since I’ll be really close to his work as well.justinslot
I just don’t watch them. I scarcely watch any video online, but especially not something with political content. It’s easier and faster to just read pundit opinions.
And what’s the deal with Lady Gaga? How can kids these days listen to that noise???
Martin
@Yutsano: Nice. I had some outpatient work done last year and it went the same way. Did I read the document they gave me? Yes. Any changes to my health? No. Any questions? No. Ok, see you tomorrow.
Other than the usual issue that anesthesia doesn’t much work on me, and the investigation into what would actually work, it went just fine. I was out in a hurry, went home and watched a ballgame.
That's *Master* of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN)
Speaking of medical procedures, the spot on Eddie’s tummy is not cancer. Of course, Eddie being Eddie, he needs a root canal and three teeth extracted. He may also have to see the dermatologist about his tummy.
Yutsano
@Martin: There might be an issue with the anesthesia, as it tends to take a lot to work on me. Otherwise they say it should be a fairly easy procedure. 99% success rate and less than 1% chance of complications. I’m guessing he cuts me open, does his business, then I rest for a couple days then back to the grind.
Martin
@justinslot:
Hey you kids, get off my lawn!
[shakes fist at the interons]
Martin
@Yutsano: I find it’s a little unnerving how nonchalant doctors are about the whole cutting people open part.
Yutsano
@Martin: I have a friend doing his residency in general surgery. He’s learning from some of the best in the world, and it’s dawning on me that one of the reasons why is because they fucking observe for YEARS before they even get to assist. He finally did his first gall bladder extraction last month and he’s in his third year. He had two qualified surgeons breathing down his neck the whole time. Plus my surgeon’s been operating for thirty plus years and came very highly recommended. They’d better know their shit or they can fuck up a person’s life and they’d better always be aware of that fact or they shouldn’t be doing it period.
Martin
@Yutsano: I agree. I just can’t see myself mentally getting to a point that cutting someone open seems ‘routine’. It just seems like one of those things that we’re supposed to be pre-wired to not be comfortable with.
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
It was started because Mickey Kaus and Bob Wright thought they could become as rich and successful as Chris Matthews, Pat Buchanan, George Will, et al… if only people could watch them.
People watch it because they (a) mistakenly believe that successful writers must be wonderful speakers and (b) don’t have anything better to do with their time.
“A”, I think, began with stories of the Algonquin Round Table. It really isn’t true– most of the successful writers I know (and I’ve known Pulitzer winners, NYT bestseller denizens and a numerous millionaires) began writing because they had ideas to communicate, but trouble stringing sentences together.
The Roger Eberts and Harlan Ellisons (to name two raconteurs) are comparatively rare. The norm is closer to Stephen King or Kurt Vonnegut, where you come away wondering if English is really his first language.
“B” sounds harsh, but most people can read much, much faster than they can listen (or, more precisely, than the people they listen to can talk). And, usually, reading lends higher comprehension.
Why would you do something that is less efficient?
There is a certain “watch the train wreck” quality to some of the broadcasts, but I can get better entertainment from the VH-1 reality shows, thanks.
JSD
I thought the one with Greenwald and Frum the other day was pretty good, but not sure I will watch Greenwald and AMC.
Martin
Just finished watching Greenwald and Lessig. I wouldn’t exactly call it making nice since not much changed since Maddow. I think Greenwald is simply trying too hard to ignore Kagan’s record. He accused her of having not expressed an opinion on the major cases of the day such as Citizens United, and Lessig had to point out that Kagan was the one who put the Citizens United case together for the government and argued that case. I mean, GG could argue that her argument sucked because the govt lost that case, but to say that she never expressed an opinion? Seriously, Glenn?
Yutsano
@Martin: It’s really trying to get your hands and mind to focus on your training and not so much on the psychology of being in another human body. He says once you get to the point where all you see is how the body is put together as an abstraction, then it actually turns kind of fun.
Martin
@Yutsano: I think I’m too empathetic. I’d constantly be focused on how it would feel to be cut into.
Granted, my anesthesia resistance has caused me to wake up in the middle of surgical procedures before, so I’m actually been on the other side of that before.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Woodrow L. Goode, IV: In Vonnegut’s case it was really just that he was painfully, deathly shy. Friends of mine who met him had the same experience as you did, and in one or two panel things I saw he seemed awkward and didn’t say much, but in one extended interview I saw where the interviewer managed to get him relaxed, he was really quite charming and articulate.
Having said that, I agree that many if not most remarkably good writers are drawn to it precisely because they can’t express themselves in other ways very well. Vonnegut wrote somewhere that he could never debate very well because “The beliefs I have to defend are so soft and complicated, actually, and, when vivisected, turn into bowls of undifferentiated mush.”
He also wrote that seeing a critic taking apart a piece of literature in a mean-spirited way from his comfortable non-creative perch was “like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.”
Shy, maybe, but that guy had more wit, charm and intelligence in his writing than anyone I’ve ever conversed with, and that includes some pretty well-known conversationalists also.
flyerhawk
I can’t say I’ve watched any shows.
But I just subscribed to podcast. Why the heck not? While some episodes sound dreadful others seem at least worth listening to while going to work.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
Mickey Kaus is one of the cofounders. Enough said.
miwome
I’ve made it through I think two ever. I like the concept and occasionally I like the content. The other problem the site has besides the length (I mean, an hour is a lot to ask in this day and age) is that the streaming just isn’t that good. The number of times I’ve had to refresh the page to keep something going or start it over is just ridiculous, and it really lowers the chances I’m going to be able to sustain attention if I’m waiting for the damn thing to reload every five minutes. Case in point: Robert Wright vs. Bassam Nasser, who was talking from Gaza about conditions there. I bloody well study Gaza, like specifically and in depth, and I gave up after the tenth refresh.
Bunleigh
David Corn does it well, usually paired with a bizarre yet sometimes semi-lucid futurist wingnut named Jim Pinkerton. McWhorter and Loury can be amusing, with Loury in the Pinkerton role– he’s sort of a half-Malcom X half Richard Nixon type. McWhorter had an interesting one with T-N Coates. Also, although I’m not sure of this, BH is the one place where Kaus gets loose enough to publicly acknowledge his goat problem.
Best way to do a whole episode is download the sound track, as someone mentioned. Otherwise, it is possible to choose snippets, which is the only reasonable way to do Goldberg or Greenwald. And it may be the service that confirmed the Althouse/wino suspicion.
The Tim Channel
Since you asked. I have watched a few of their discussions. TED and foraTV are better, if only because of the diversity in speakers.
It’s also very easy to find exactly the speakers I want to view on Youtube.
Enjoy.
geg6
I think I’ve watched three eps of BHTV. One was Matt Y and someone I’ve never heard of, one was David Frum and someone I can’t remember, and another was Matt Taibbi and I forget who it was. Call me unimpressed. The Taibbi one was entertaining because, well, he’s funny and does enough actual tv to be comfortable on camera. Frum was okay, too. Otherwise, it was pretty painful. There’s a reason these people aren’t on tv. I lost a lot of respect for Matt Y after watching him on it. He is a pretty good blogger but is a painfully bad speaker, so bad that I found him incoherent.
I gave it a try but doubt I’ll be watching any others as I didn’t find it illuminating in any way and it’s too long. I can read faster.
arguingwithsignposts
I refuse to watch after listening to about 5 minutes of Megan McArdle arguing with someone one. The stupid. It burned.
cleek
i hate even the idea of it.
@de stijl:
that’s what it makes me think, too.
it’s like Rock And Roll Fantasy Camp for wanna-be pundits.
hilzoy fangirl
@Jim Newell:
You’re probably thinking of that other site, blowinggoats.tv.
DougJ
@Jack:
Cool.
shortstop
I can’t get past the first five minutes of any of them, other than the iconic Althouse meltdown on the topic of breastage. It remains a classic internet tradition since for once she was apparently sober while screaming about her victimization.
PanAmerican
Given a choice between watching MattY or midget pr0n, I’m going with the midgets.
RAD
It’s like watching a PBS pledge drive for TV: some things just don’t transfer well to video. I have never been able to get through one of those things where each participant in the dialogue stares blankly into a computer screen. Just not interesting video to me, especially when trying to represent a dialogue, despite how interesting the topic. A web cam in your monitor is not good replacement for a movie camera.
RAD
Matt M
I used to watch a lot more than I do now, but I always enjoyed the Yglesias/Drezner matchups, and I have a soft spot for Bob Wright. His somewhat recent 2-parter with Hitchens was decent. He has a blind spot when it comes to the idiotarian trio of Althouse/McCardle/Goldberg, though, and it’s hurt the site.
matoko_chan
as far as “conservatives” are concerned its crossfire for fuglies and multichins.
Why in the name of all that is sacred would these people want to be SEEN?
After hearing Ramesh Ponneru’s voice i’ll never read him without giggling again.
Some people should be neither seen or heard, but just read.
Uncle Ebeneezer
I think you guys should give bhtv another chance. Once you get beyond the challenge of focussing for an hour, the site is pretty amazing. I don’t know of any other site that covers such a broad range of topics and yet also hones in to such detailed wonkish levels on issues such as the UN, Supreme Court, philosophy etc. etc. And Science Saturday is the best thing on the net, imo.
As far as the list of bloggers goes I don’t know how anyone would consider: Andrew Sullivan, Matt Y, Ezra K, Eric Alterman, David Frum, Will Wilkinson, Julian Sanchez, Bob Kagan, Heather Hurlburt, Rob Farley, Spencer Ackerman, Eli Lake, Eric Posner, Jack Balkin, Francis Fukayama, Reihan Salaam, Glenn Loury, Michelle Goldberg, etc. to be lower level blogger/thinkers by any stretch. In fact, I have been hoping that DougJ would at some point come on over at some point seeing as BJ is a site that is frequently mentioned/linked/loved by many of the bhtv commenters.
Janus Daniels
“After hearing Ramesh Ponneru’s voice i’ll never read him without giggling again.”
As opposed to the deep respect that you gain from reading The Party of Death? ; )
Glenn Fayard
Look for Neil Sinhababu. He’s from the blog Donkeylicious (and used to do Ezra Klein and Cogitamus), and is one half of a fairly interesting head blog. I won’t spoil the ethical topic.
Ken Pidcock
I never watch bhtv, but I listen to it often. Mostly, I’m not looking for content but for pairings that I find particularly entertaining. David Corn and Jim Pinkerton are delightful. Wright and Joel Achenbach do a deadpan act that I find quite amusing. And John Horgan and George Johnson are just fun to eavesdrop on, even when they never say anything about science.
Plus, I’ve come to admire people I would not otherwise for the ability they demonstrate on bhtv to think on their feet. John McWhorter and (avert your eyes) Megan McCardle come to mind.